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Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Call for Input: LDS Women Who've Experienced Childhood Sexual Trauma

A dear friend of mine, Jessica Mockett, creator and director of The Heart of the Matter, is endeavoring to open a residential treatment center and boarding school for helping LDS young women who have been sexually traumatized or abused. She is looking for your stories! Please feel free to contribute by emailing Jessica at the address shown at the bottom of her letter.

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I am very seriously pursuing the creation of a non-profit
residential recovery home and boarding school for LDS girls ages 8-14 who have
been sexually traumatized or abused. It’s a beautiful plan, full of amazing
approaches to finding healing and developing tools for dealing with this trauma
for the rest of life. I hope the endeavor will be blessed by God and become a
reality soon.

Recently, I got a response from someone I’m networking with
that he didn’t know anyone in the LDS community who personally struggled with
this in their lives or in the lives of their children. I think it very likely
I’ll run into this many times as I journey down this path. These stories are so
often kept quiet in our community and
you know me – I like to shine lights into the dark corners so that people can
find a way to hope and healing.

I had a thought tonight that it might be good to gather
several personal stories from LDS women who’ve experienced any sort of sexual
abuse and trauma in their lives as a young girl or teen. This could be
molestation, rape, being trafficked, coerced or forced into creating
pornography, being bullied sexually by peers, becoming addicted to pornography,
etc.

What I am hoping to have on hand from each of you willing to
share is a brief understanding of the trauma you experienced, how that trauma
was addressed by your parents (or if they knew about it at all), how growing up
in the church impacted your feelings on your trauma, what lifelong struggles
have you dealt with that you feel pinpoint back to that trauma, do you think
there is value in helping girls as soon as possible after the trauma to learn
to understand and cope with what they experienced, and what impact you think my
program may have for good.

Not much to ask right? Bare your souls and heartaches? When
I use these stories for helping me gain support I will respect your choice of
being anonymous, changing your name, only using a first name, or your full name
– whatever works for you.

Ezekiel 34:11-12,16

"For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick"